Penang Foods - Bak Kut Teh

You guys might wonder why is this heck keep on writing on his blog when he suppose to be outside enjoying the every bit of Penang.
Reason: The Malaysian weather is just too crazy for me. So hot, I can melt once I step out of the house..... So most of you guys can see me hanging around my house most of the day, waiting for the sun to set. Yep, I am the next Dracula!!!!! Bwahahahahaha.

Okay, this time I am introducing you one of my favourites! Bak Kut Teh. Pork Bone Teh if I were to direct translate that. Basically it is a soupy dish that contained all kind of pork meats, pork bones, Chinese mushrooms, bean curd, and something I missed the most, deep fried dough! Back in Aus, I can still cook this dish whenever I like. But, I can never find good and fresh deep-fried dough.....

Yeah, I think once you guys hear about the word soupy, you might think that the heat had gone up to my head..... Normally after eating this dish, I will sweat like a pig. So normally I will eat that for tea, not lunch. Okay enough of crapping. The place that I went was located at Macalister Road, opposite to a hotel named Red Rock Hotel. Yep, once again, I did not take the name of the place down. Besides, the foods that I devoured were mostly from hawker centres, which mostly has no name...... So if you guys want to try this place out, make sure you pay attention when you drive from the city and reached the hawker centre called Hong Kong Dim Sum.
They have this traditional way of cleaning your cutlery. Hmm, not cutlery, maybe your chopsticks and spoons. The traditional way is by cleaning your "cutlery" with a bowl of hot water. Super hot, you will get burn if you are not well trained. Maybe if you go for dimsum anywhere you will still see this, but outside the dimsum restaurant you hardly see this way anymore.

The sumptuous feast. Maybe not sumptuous, but definitely mouthwatering one! The plate of yellow-ish cubes are the deep-fried dough I was talking about. You dip them into the soup and eat it when they are soaking wet with the soup! Very flavoursome.

Tada! This is the Bak Kut Teh! Filled with meats and a bit of veggie. But the soup is very herby, unlike the Singaporean style, which is mostly pepper...... That night we had 3 refills of the soup and we can still finished the whole claypot. I drank at least 2 bowls of the soup!

Next time maybe later today or tomorrow I will post more foods up. Maybe I will do the seafoods from Teluk Kumbar!

Foods in Penang - I

I think I will dedicate this blog into foods for these few days. Cause I wanted to lure you guys into coming to Penang. Okay, the first stop has to be the one from a hawker centre in Tanjung Bungah. I can't recalled what is the hawker centre name, but it is opposite the Penang Chinese Swimming Club. I was the member over there before, and that place was pretty familiar to me, eventhough I lived in the city.

Okay, this place was introduced by my sister. There is this place that sell "ikan bakar - grilled fish". 不一样 ikan bakar. Yeah you hear me correct, it means Unique Grilled Fish.... The name itself was very catchy, so I went ahead with my sister. It turned out to be very nice! The sauce was really different from a normal grilled fish. The sauces had some deep-fried anchovies and dried shrimps as well. So since the 不一样 ikan bakar is so famous, we decided to name the place 不一样 Hawker Centre! Sorry guys, the picture of the grilled fish turned out to be pretty dark. I was quite new to my sister's camera. So you guys will have to settle for the 不一样 sotong or 不一样 grilled squid. The next thing I wanna introduce is Ambla Sumboi! Ambla is a fruit, a bit bitter to some people's taste. So they add dried plumes which makes it sourish! That's the drink I always order since I reach Penang 1 week ago. Yeah, I am in Penang for a week, although my mom is annoying me to the max, I am looking forward for more Penang foods!

Although the grilled fish is very good, others were only alrite. Satay, fried oyster omelette were so so only. I will post some of the good satay up next time. I will try to update this blog with heaps of foods next time. So I guess I shall make you guys drool for awhile, before the big Niagra falls come down! Hahahaha.

A normal (not unique) satay

Pretty normal fried oyster omelette

Ice kacang, or I don't know what it is called. Basically it is a cold dessert.

Job well done. I took heaps of pictures of other foods, they doesn't turn out nicely..... I was having Hokkien-Loh Mee actually. It is mixture of Loh Mee and Prawn Mee. Spicy and very sticky, ditch that dish a lot!

Till next time, please prepare your mouth for Niagra Fall!

A series of unfortunate events

I think taking the flight back home is actually a wrong movement. Right after I boarded the flight, bad things tend to follow me around.... These are the series of unfortunate events I would love to rant about!

1. Change of flight for my KL - Penang trip. Although I had changed from flying at 9pm to 4pm which means I only left 1 hour transit, that doesn't mean it is a good thing. This is because the flight from KL to Penang is not a connecting flight.... I need to change the flight to the next day and sleep in my friend's (one of the generous monkey's) house. Although it means I get to spend one night with my beloved friend, that really bugged me because I can't reach home earlier.
2. While printing my boarding pass for flight from Melb to Gold Coast, I accidentally turned off the computer instead of turning on the printer to print my pass. So I could not print that bloody pass and need to queue up for printing of my boarding pass. I was pretty angry at myself that time, for being so stupid, and turn off my computer instead.
3. Went to watch whales in the ocean. It is a good thing actually. They were magnificent! But I came back with a "salty fish". My shoe were soaking wet from the trip cause the sea water keep splashing onto my legs, AND my whole body, while we were chasing whales. Although this is a good sign that I should buy a new shoe, I quite like that shoe. Regradless of me skating through the wet ground with that shoe, I still liked them.
4. Now this is the worst thing ever happened to me..... My bloody beloved Sony Ericsson K850i which was newly purchased from Aus is going crazy with me. So am I...... The battery always dies after 12 hours. I need to charge it every day......... OMFG.....
5. Then, when I just reach Penang, my house had this series of blackout. No power, no fan, but heaps of mossy...... The stupid "people" don't know how to repair the "major breakdown". I called them at least 6 times and I reckon they know my name at the end of that series. OMG, being an urban person, blackout is really hard for me, and the mossy is not helping. At the end of the day, I was busy looking for cockie to pass my time.......

Some of you guys might say, stop the whinging. Get a grab of what is real and stop ranting..... But hey, this is my blog. So I can rant, ramble and whinge as much as I want. I should do something with my Sony. I hope these unfortunate events will end here.

ASM Conference

I better write this entry before I go off for holiday back in my hometown. I assume I will be a tourist in my hometown, cause I presume Penang will change to a phase I will never recognise. But before that, I will be heading to Gold Coast and watch a real life whale. I hope it will be great.

The past five days, I was busy. In fact, I was very very busy. I was attending a international level conference from Australian Society for Microbiology. Sound very interesting huh? Actually it is some sort of lecture over another lectures, that start from morning going through evening. You hear me correctly, sometimes I was over there from 8.30am to 10.00 pm. Of course it is not all about lectures, we have time for networking and social (this is what it said over the itinerary). I have to say, these lectures are very different from those you experienced during undergraduate. During undegraduate study, we were taught of what is the definition of Gram negative bacteria, what is bioremediation or the use of infection control. But over here, since I am the most under-qualified person, their talks were mostly on the research they did and what are they looking for.

There were heaps of microbiologist from all over the world. I was lucky to be able to chat with some of the most powerful person in this field. The first day was rather bleak. I was from the outback and looking at people chatting away are not a good sign when I have no one to talk to (except my supervisor). Luckily I managed to adapt to this kind of situation and prised my mouth open to speak with strangers. Almost everyday, I managed to talk with a handful of strangers, and "network". I didn't know being a scientist is so hard..... Anywho, on the second day, I noticed although there were high amount of people chatting in groups, there were bound to have people who stood there alone, feeling out of place. Then I began to feel relief and chatted away.

Thanks to my supervisor, who invited me to present in a small workshop, I managed to chat with some people from different universities, all around Australia. The picture below is my supervisor presenting in that workshop.
This is my lovely lengthy poster displayed in the Exhibition Hall.
That picture was taken when I was in a plenary presentation by a Laureate Prof Peter C. Doherty. I should say, some of the presentations can bored you to sleep or dead, while others are very amusing and funny.
I was very excited, afterall it is my first time attending a conference. I dare not take too many photos, cause none of them took any photos, and besides people are over here to listen to the presentation. Not to take photograph like all the Asian like to do. So three photos are all I can get from five days of conference.